


By Any Other Name

by everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus



Series: Stars, Hide Your Fire [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: And is still a nerd, Eventual Poe Dameron/Finn, M/M, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron - Freeform, Poe needs some help, a nerd who needs help, finn - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:11:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9125182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus/pseuds/everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus
Summary: “So space is the other guy?” Finn asked, bemused.“Oh honey, if we’re putting space into the equation, than you’re the other guy, because I’ve been in love with space since the day I was born.”--Poe has had a really, really long week and all he wants is to sleep.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Guys I'm a fucking wreck. I miss Carrie so much. It's been a rough week. So I decided to put Poe through some torture too. Not sure how good this is going to be, but it isn't betaed, so any mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

Poe had had a long, long week. All he really wanted was one good night of sleep during this absolutely dismal state of events. He was dying, he really was, for just one moment of peace. It started on Monday with the General. She called him in to ask his opinion on a political problem with the D’Qaran government on the amount of weapons and military personnel and the dangers that they posed to the surrounding villages. They stayed locked in that office for twelve hours hashing out a plan to ensure the safety of everyone, on base and off, and a way to ease the minds of the officials that were less enthusiastic about the rebellion effort. This wasn’t uncommon, the two of them pulling all nighters to figure out what their next step was. They were both smart and they valued each other’s opinions, but they thought in vastly different ways. The General was more practical, more logistical, the way that somebody who commanded an entire army of resources and people should be thinking. She was a strategic genius and the perfect general. Poe thought more empathetically. He thought in relationships instead if positions. He thought about how two ships would meet, what guns they would fire, what switches their pilots would flip instead of when and where and what they would gain if they won. He thought in people and pilots and soldiers instead of armies. Those two kinds of thinking complimented each other. They were the perfect critical pair. 

On Tuesday, he went to the government with their plans and reassurances and spent about ten hours arguing with people and getting nowhere. The General thought that they would respond better to a more down to earth, everyday looking guy than to some Princess from a planet only famous for it's destruction. It turned out that they wouldn’t respond to anybody. They were holding on by a thread. He went home exhausted and having an extra day’s work to do and no chance of sleep. 

On Wednesday, he was sent to Luke Skywalker’s secret fortress to deliver supplies and messages to Rey. The first time that he had gone, he was gobsmacked, unable to speak, and had made a right fucking fool of himself. Luke Skywalker was his hero, he was everybody’s hero. Everybody grew up hearing the stories about Luke and Leia Skywalker and Han Solo saving the universe. He had grown up with Leia and Han and they had all but adopted him when his parents died, but he only knew Luke for a short while. When he was little, he could brag to the other children that he knew the great three, that he got picked up from school by Han Solo last week. But after the shock and excitement wore off, he became increasingly more anxious. He liked Rey. He really did. He wasn’t the kind of person who trusted easily, but she saved Finn, and there was nothing he appreciated or respected more than somebody who protected his friend- boyfriend- husband. But his monthly runs quickly became a source of great distress. He found himself in the company of two mind readers, and he might have been an open book, but after Ren, his mind was his. He had been violated before, body and mind, and he wasn’t letting anybody into his mind or pants easily. Rey always insisted that he stay the night because it was a long flight home, and he spent the night tossing and turning. Every time he brushed sleep, his dreams would be filled with hands rummaging through his mind and tearing at his skin. 

On Thursday, he had a day off. He would usually spend a day like that during a week like this sleeping off his problems. But something was loose in his engines, a belt or something, and it was making a squeaking noise that he couldn’t stand. She had to be perfect, his Shara. If she wasn’t, it was his fault. He stayed elbow-deep in her innards all day, tearing at everything that he could think of, but finding nothing wrong. He remembered days like this with his mother, hot and sweaty, arms covered in oil and grime, describing and analysing each and every part of the her ship. When he got his own ship, he named it after his mother and kept her as clean and running as well as his mother did her’s. Something was loose, so he spent the day the way he used to, except alone and a little sad. He didn’t really remember when he decided he needed to sleep, but it was late and he barely got a few hours before he was awakened by his blaring alarm. 

On Friday, everything came to a head when he was scheduled for a mission with Jess and Snap. It wasn’t too much, it was a supply run to a base outside of an asteroid belt. It was simple. He and Jess and Snap did it once a week. But something must have really been wrong with the engines when he left. He might have even made it worse the day before. He felt it the moment he took off, something was shifted, different about his baby. He figured that it was his rummaging and that it wouldn’t change much. That he had to get used to that belt being tightened again. He knew better. His mom always told him, “if one little thing is wrong, you land that second. You understand me? It could mean you life, mijo.” It started with his speed. He fell behind Jess and Snap gradually. He wasn’t too concerned about it at first, they were coasting mostly, but after a while, they were pretty far ahead and he started to worry. 

“Hey, guys are you speeding up on me?” His voice was playful.

“No, what’s going on, man, you okay?” Snap responded. He sounded worried. 

“I’m losing speed. Somethings going on with my engines. Can we dock anywhere?” He started checking everything he could. Something was wrong and he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. His only hope of not crashing was docking but- shit. “Guys my shields are down I can’t land anywhere without burning to death.” 

“Is there any way for you to dock to one of us? We’d have to abandon the X-Wing but if we can we can get you out...” Bee-Bee twirped behind him. Lights on his dash were going out. Everything was shutting down. 

“Guys, I’m losing everything, shields, thrust, navigation- shit I’ve got like two minutes left before emergency life control fails. We need to do something fast.” No response. “Guys?” Fuck. His comms were down. There wasn’t really much for him to do. He ripped his flight helmet off of his head and reached instinctively for the oxygen mask above his head before thinking better of it. Brushing the comfort of breathable air aside, he reached to deploy Bee-Bee. The robot twirped and protested, but Poe discharged him successfully from Shara.

“Come on Buddy, go back to base,” He urged, even though he knew that Bee-Bee couldn’t hear him without comms. He watched as they flew around to his window and tapped it softly, as if to ask if he was alright. He gave his droid a reassuring smile and a thumbs up, which they tried to respond with their lighter, but seeing as they were in space, there was no oxygen to sustain his flame. Poe chuckled slightly and watched as Bee-Bee headed back to D’Qar. He felt a sudden lump in his throat as he realized that he was abandoning his ship and his helmet and- his life. He ignored it. Finn was expecting him back before lunch. 

Poe only knew a couple of things at this point. 

1\. He could see Jess and Snapp turning back towards him, and they could no doubt see that something was wrong. Which meant that he had help coming.

2\. He couldn’t use his oxygen mask because of the pressure. If he breathed in or held his breath, the vacuum would expand the oxygen and tear his lung tissue (ouch), spreading fatal air bubbles into his bloodstream, leading inevitably to his heart and brain, killing him dead (double ouch). That was just the first thing that would kill him. 

3\. He only had fifteen seconds before he passed out from lack of oxygen because that’s how long it took for his body to burn the oxygen in his blood. After those fifteen seconds, he only had a few minutes before he died of asphyxiation. Five to ten if he was lucky. Not a lot of time, but hopefully enough for Snapp and Jess to figure out what he was planning. 

4\. The second thing that would maim him would be ebullism, which, in the simplest terms was when bubbles would form from the moisture in his eyes, skin, saliva, etc. He would pretty much feel like he was boiling alive before he passed out. Not going to feel great, but it wasn’t likely to leave any scars or kill him unless he was out for more than fifteen minutes, and by then he would long be dead from lack of oxygen, so it was really in the back of his mind. 

5\. The next thing he was worrying about was the temperature, but he calmed his nerves by reminding himself that it didn’t really matter if it was -200 or 200 degrees because he would pass out after fifteen seconds, so it didn’t matter if he burned or froze. 

Five simple things to remember as he jumped out of his X-wing with no suit, helmet, or shield. It was a fucked up plan, but he had to do it if he wanted to live. There was no way for Jess or Snap to latch onto Shara because he didn’t have the power to steer or to create an airlock on his side. He couldn’t eject because the doors on X-Wings locked during engine failure to give life support a better chance of success. He had one choice. 

Jess and Snap were getting pretty close know, maybe two yards away. He wrapped his fingers around his helmet and with all of his strength, he bashed it against the glass above him. It bounced off uselessly the first time, but he tried again and again and again. After a few tries, a small crack appeared. He pressed his finger against it, and sure as hell, he felt the air being sucked out. He set his eyes on Snap, who was closer, and waited until Snap pulled up next to him. He lined his shoulder up with the crack and slammed against it once, twice, and on the third try, it gave. 

What transpired next happened over the course of the thirteen seconds that he was conscious. He shot out of Shara, trying to aim as much in the direction of Snap as he could. He could feel the void around him, cold because they were millions of miles away from the nearest sun. He could feel the sweat gleaning his body boiling and burning and he would have screamed if he could. The pressure was pressing down on him and he remembered to exhale. Without the air in his lungs, he was reminded of the eerily familiar feeling of suffocation. Images of Ren flashed through his head. His mind was getting fuzzy and he knew that unconsciousness was drawing closer. His eyes hurt, but he forced them to focus on Snap, who was moved to expand his shields. Poe felt the shields pass through him, and the temperature and pressure lessened, but his lungs still ached. He was awake only long enough to see Snap open his X-Wing and lunge for him. 

It was surprisingly difficult to articulate exactly how he felt in those thirteen seconds. Yeah he hurt, Jesus fuck he hurt. He’d never felt that much pain in such a short amount of time. Sure, he’d hurt before. Sure, he’d been tortured, beaten, and shot too many times to count. He’d felt pain before. He was no stranger to it. But this was different. It was a different kind of hurt. It was like he was being torn apart at the molecular level. Like the elemental materials that made him up was being destroyed. Like the star stuff in his veins was being set on fire. He couldn’t breath and the long it went, the more it hurt. He felt like somebody had set a fire in his lungs. His skin was boiling, bubbling, sending waves of pain through his body like electricity. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could barely think enough to beg any god that was listening that Snap would get to him or he would pass out sooner rather than later. Though his brain was jumping back and forth and he was just on the edge of panic, something about this was strangely calming. It was so quiet. So silent out there, like nothing he’d ever heard before. It was deafening, which is a funny thing for silence to be. Everything to do with the Rebellion was so loud. The people were loud, brash, brave people, who had no problem saying what was on their minds. It was their jobs to be outspoken. So he spent most of his time being shouted at. Battles, of course were loud. Explosions and blaster shots and engines running and zooming by. It was so loud that he always left a battle with his ears ringing. He was loud. He was the brashest and bravest pilot in the Resistance. He spent the greater section of his life being looked over because he was young, because he was only ranked because of his parents, because he was a pretty boy. He had to scream just to be heard, but when people listened, he won them over. He was charming, but to turn on the charm, he had to get someone’s attention. So he created a version of himself, somebody who made a scene every time he entered a room. He created somebody who was an exaggerated version of himself, somebody who could be loud enough to get everybody's attention. But that kind of exhausted him. He didn’t like being loud. He liked the quiet. And he never really got quiet. Except with Finn. Finn was so quiet. He was so soft and so gentle. There was no need to yell or scream with Finn. He didn’t have to fight for his attention, because when they were together, it was just them, even if they were in a room with a hundred other people, Finn made it seem like there was nothing else in the galaxy but them and their conversation and their lingering touches. He didn’t have to pretend when he was around Finn, he could be quiet and Finn would never think less of him. That kind of solitude in community, that safe place was not common. Poe was so lucky to have that in Finn. But those fleeting moment of quiet were just that, fleeting. They never too long. This quiet, the empty of space, it went on infinitely. This was Finn a little colder, a little harder, a little less gentle. But it was that quiet. The kind that he longed for. 

And then there was a moment that he was terrified that he would die and he would never get to tell Finn how much of a sanctuary he was. How much he liked him. 

Loved him. Definitely loved him. 

And then he felt a hand wrap around his arm and he was tugged in a direction and then he passed out and his lungs stopped screaming at him. 

He woke briefly on the flight home. He was tucked in the pilot's seat of Snap’s X-Wing and he was worried for a second that he was the one flying, and then he noticed Snap standing, hunched over above him, flying from behind the seat. There was a mask on his face, forcing oxygen in and out of his lungs and fuck was he grateful for it. He was a very strange mixture of hot and cold. He was shaking and his fingers and toes were numb, but he felt like he was burning at the same time. He was sweating, but it was a sick sweat, not a hot sweat. He was so damn uncomfortable, and everything hurt, but he was also so surprised that he was alive that that sort of faded into the background. It worked. He did not expect that to work. 

He looked up, his eyes no doubt bloodshot and dazed. Snap saw him and patted his cheek, coaxing him farther out of unconsciousness. 

“Hey Kid, you with me?” He said softly. Poe tried to answer, but all that came out his throat was a hoarse croak. He felt like somebody let Freddy Kruger had been let loose in his throat. He winced. “Yeah, that’s what you get for being a dipshit, dipshit.” Snap remarked. He looked miffed. Worried, under it, but definitely miffed. He kept cursing, calling him all sorts of names, telling him how dangerous space was with no protection as if he hadn’t heard it all a hundred times before, and Poe drifted off somewhere in the middle of it, feeling warm and at home. 

When he woke up the second time, a few things were clear. 

1\. He was not getting pain killers because 

a) Their supplies of them were pretty sparse and they had to ration them out to extreme things like, oh, for example, a mother fucking naked space walk. 

b) He was probably getting punished for being an idiot. 

2\. He probably wasn’t getting the luxury of passing out again because he was very awake and very aware of every crevice of his body that hurt. 

3\. The General was mad at him and he knew this because

a) How could she not be he just jumped willingly into space with no suit. 

b)She was sitting next to his bed and she never ever stayed after he woke up. She would wait until he began to stir and then take her leave because she didn’t like  
anybody knowing she cared. But she did. And she was probably only there to tell him off for being stupid. Which, granted, he deserved. 

There was a mask on his face like the one that Snap had strapped on to him except with a cord connecting it to a noisy machine next to him. He was in a bed and it felt great and he really wanted to pretend that he was still sleeping because the bed felt so soft, but his eyes were already open and the General was a smart lady and definitely had the Force, so she was already standing and staring down at him, and listen, he’d faced all kinds of foes, the Imperial fleet, interrogation droids, mobsters, Kylo fucking Ren. He’d broken a Hutt out of prison, but the scariest moment of his entire life, was right then as the woman who had the power to kill, torture, or imprison him stood above him with the most stone-cold bitch face he’d ever seen. He would not have been surprised if she had pulled a knife and cut his dick off right there. But, again, she was a smart lady, and as she looked down at him, she knew that that look was enough. She didn’t really have to say anything. 

“You’re an idiot, Dameron.” She said softly, barely any heat behind her words. 

“Yes ma’am.” He responded. 

“Just like your mother.” She was smiling. 

“Yes ma’am.” She patted his hand and left. 

Jesus, that woman put the fear of God in him. 

Finn, who Poe had barely even registered, stood from his spot sitting at Poe’s and sat on the edge of his bed. 

“Hey buddy,” Poe started, not really knowing what to say. Bee-Bee Eight, who he hadn’t even noticed was in the room, nudged against his hand, giving him a momentary distraction from the conversation he knew he was about to have. He’d spent the first few months that Finn was on the base ensuring him that ninety percent of the missions he went on weren’t life threatening and he rarely ended up in hospital, but he kept having to eat his words. He had some explaining to do, because he promised that he would look after himself so that Finn didn’t have to worry and he knew that he had caused a lot of strife with his little stunt, but his throat still hurt and he was really, really tired and it had been a long week and all he wanted to do was sleep. He guessed that Finn had the Force too because he knew. 

“Is there another guy I should know about?” It seemed completely out of left field and Poe wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about before he looked down and saw the small bruise that Finn was pointing at on his bicep. 

“Oh shit, I forgot about the space hickeys.” he said nonchalantly. Finn looked at him like he’d grown a third head. “Space hickeys,” he said again, as if repeating himself would make Finn understand. “It happened when increases and decreases of pressure pop blood vessels in some areas and leave bruises that look kind of like hickeys. It happens sometimes when you spend more than a couple of hours at light speed, or, I guess, when you jump out of your X-Wing with no suit.” 

“So space is the other guy?” Finn asked, bemused. 

“Oh honey, if we’re putting space into the equation, than you’re the other guy, because I’ve been in love with space since the day I was born.” Finn laughed, deep and bright, and it set off the butterflies in Poe’s stomach. “Come here.” He said motioning vaguely. Finn looked confused, so he wrapped his hand weakly around Finn’s arm and pulled him forward until he was laying on the bed next to Poe. He chuckled softly as Poe rested his head on Finn’s chest. Finn felt a little stiff, like he wasn’t quite comfortable, but after a moment, he relaxed and wrapped his arms around Poe’s waist. He felt safe and comfortable and like he could sleep through all of the pain and that he was feeling right then. It was a bit awkward, maneuvering around the chord of the mask, but they made it work. He was warm and comfortable. And it was quiet. Not like space, not deafening, not endless, it was Finn. Not cold or unfeeling or harsh. It was Finn. 

And that’s what he really wanted. 

There were a lot of things that he had to say to Finn, a lot of things that he needed to get out before his next near-death experience, but that was for later. All he wanted right then was to finally get a good night’s sleep after the week that he’d had. Finn was humming softly, the vibrations ringing through his chest and lulling Poe to sleep. Just as he brushed the edge of rest, though, Finn’s voice brought him back. 

“I’m going to protect you.” He said softly. 

“From what?” Poe whispered back. 

“Anything.” Finn answered. “Everything.”


End file.
